TEXAS: PORT ARTHUR MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST

 November 24, 2021

Ninety miles east of Houston is the town of Port Arthur, population 54,000 and home to the largest oil refinery in the United States. Oil refineries dominate the horizon.

Our destination was the Museum of the Gulf Coast, which specializes in just what its name implies--the history of the Gulf Coast.

I stopped to say hello to their welcoming mascot.

Nope, no cavities.

This is a strange museum. In a relatively small space, it tries to cover just about everything a museum can cover, and sometimes it felt like it was an overly-ambitious goal. 

The first floor covers the area's history. There was a lot of interesting material, but it felt like a mish-mash of topics with no clear path through.

Geography:

Exploration:

It was fun to see some information about Esteban, the Moroccan slave who accompanied Cabeza Da Vaca on his 16th century exploration of southern North America. Our book club had read a book called The Moors Account about him earlier in the year. (See review at the end of this post.)

Next to the exploration history were some artifacts from early settlers of Port Arthur, some three or four centuries later.

Then suddenly we were in the World War I section . . . 

. . . and the World War II section.

As noted, Port Arthur has a big petroleum industry, so no surprise that we came upon a petroleum section.

We saw similar displays in the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, seven months earlier.

But then we went back in time . . .

. . . and further back . . .

. . . and then we shifted over to the Texas Navy.

Even for the king of hyperbole, this is quite a statement.

The museum has two levels, and we were greeted at the stairs by Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, and Ritchie Valens, the three pop music stars who were killed in a plane crash in February 1959.

If you visit this museum and don't have a lot of time, we recommend you spend most of your time upstairs. It felt better organized, was easier to navigate, and in general was more unique and interesting.

A large part of the second floor is dedicated to the musicians who are from Port Arthur and other areas of Texas. One of the most famous is Janis Joplin.

Joplin was born in 1943 in Port Arthur. She grew up there, graduating from high school in 1960. In 1967 she began her rise to fame, and by the time she died only three years later, she was a rock, soul, and blues sensation. In addition to music, her life was full of drugs and sex, and I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that she died of a heroin overdose at the young age of 27. 

The museum has a replica of her hand-painted 1965 Porsche Cabriolet

Groovy!

Janis Joplin (bronze) by Doug Clark

They had a nice display about her life in another section of the 2nd Floor--the Gulf Coast Musical Hall of Fame.

I think this might be a high school photo. I would never have recognized her.

The next-favorite product of Port Arthur has to be the artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008). He graduated from high school in Port Arthur, spent a short time at the University of Texas at Austin, and was drafted into the US Navy in 1944, after which he studied art in Kansas City, Paris, and New York. He spent the rest of his life in New York City and Florida.

I love this photo of him. He looks like someone I would want to know. 

The museum has one of the 250 signed copies of one of my favorite works by Rauschenberg, a collage showing key events of the 1960s. Rauschenberg said the print "was conceived to remind us of the love, terror, violence of the last ten years. Danger lies in forgetting."

Signs (1970)

Rauschenberg was the first living American artist to be featured by Time magazine on its cover.

The museum had several of his silk-screened collages.

Rauschenberg designed this poster to promote ROCI (the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), an organization that focused on human rights and freedom of expression.

Rauschenberg donated this piece to the museum in honor of newly-elected Texas Governor Ann Richards. Were the trash cans and abandoned arm chair some kind of encouragement to clean up the state?

Can House (Night Shade)
(1991)

A typical work combining collage and abstraction:

Earth Day (1991)

Rauschenberg designed several covers for Time magazine between 1967 and 2002. This one, signed by Rauschenberg, features Time's Man of the Year, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

If you ask a Texan, they might rank football far above Janis Joplin and Robert Rauschenberg combined. Texas is known for its passion for football. The "Sports Legends" room is full of football players heralding from Port Arthur and surrounding areas.

Since Texas football is not MY thing, I'll just highlight one display. Jimmy Johnson (whom I had never heard of, but what do I know) was the first head football coach to win both a college football national championship (when he was coaching the University of Miami) and a Super Bowl (when he was coaching the Dallas Cowboys).

A Music Hall showcases the impressive number of musicians from Texas.

How many of these names do you recognize?

I've never heard of this group, but I love their name. 

The band ZZ Top broke through to fame during my high school years and had hits all the way through the early 2000s. They hail from Houston and Dallas.

B.J. Thomas was born in Oklahoma but graduated from high school in Texas, so Texas is happy to claim him. I'll always remember him for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (1969) from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and "Hooked on a Feeling" (1968).

In the Music Hall there is a second memorial to J.P. Richardson, aka "The Big Bopper," who was killed in the 1959 plane crash with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

The Big Bopper by Doug Clark

Visitors can play their favorite songs on this juke box. It was fun to see how many of the songs I did/didn't recognize.

Another exhibit, the Hall of Fame, features many famous people from the Texas Gulf region.

I wouldn't know about Karen Silkwood were it not for the movie Silkwood (1983) starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher. (Hey, maybe it's time to watch that movie again.)

Karen Silkwood was born and raised in Texas. As an adult, she worked in a plutonium factory in Oklahoma and is known for exposing unhealthy practices in the factory. She herself was found to have plutonium contamination, but she died in a suspicious car crash at age 28 before the plutonium killed her.

One of the displays included an actual Academy Award given to Frank Cricchio for his work in photography in 1933.

We could have spent a lot more time in the museum, but both our interest level and our time were running out. It was time to move on.

This is a museum that covers a lot of ground, and even the gift shop had some interesting items.

The Museum of the Gulf Coast is definitely worth a stop, and there is truly something for everyone in its eclectic collection.

READING

The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami tells the story of the first Spanish conquistador journey across what would become the Southern United States in 1527. Led by Pánfilo de Narváez, the exploration group included one black slave from Morocco (the "Moor"),  n  whom the explorers called Esteban. While there is no historical record of Esteban's role, only that he was one of the 600 men who began the excursion and one of only four who survived it, the author does an excellent job imagining what the journey across the North American continent would have been like--experienced through Esteban's eyes.